The group stage schedule is out, and NBA Cup opening day on Oct. 30 arrives with two games that need no sales pitch: the Knicks against the 76ers and LeBron James, and the Lakers at Golden State. Fourth year of this tournament. The league is no longer easing anybody into it.
Start with Philadelphia, because that is the line I keep rereading. LeBron in Sixers colors against New York is the sort of matchup the schedule makers used to hoard for a holiday window, and per the reveal it is the second marquee spot pairing those two clubs already. That tells you how the league ranks it. It also tells you something about the Knicks, who have quietly become a team the calendar is built around rather than a team squeezed into the leftovers.
The Lakers at the Warriors is the older song, and it still plays. What makes it strange this time is the context arriving alongside it: the reporting out of Los Angeles has the franchise being sold to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger for $12.5 billion, a record price for an American sports team. A team playing a Bay Area opener while the deed changes hands is a very 2026 sentence.
checked the almanac: the lakers won the very first in-season tournament back in 2023, lebron took tournament mvp, and the event everybody swore nobody would care about now owns a slice of the fall calendar.
One more thing about this Wednesday, and it has nothing to do with brackets. Russell Westbrook announced his retirement after 18 seasons and seven teams, a nine-time All-Star closing the book on his own terms, with LeBron and Donovan Mitchell among the many who spoke up. Whatever you thought of the triple-doubles argument, and people argued about it for a decade, the man played at one speed for 18 years. Full tilt. There is no version of that era you can tell without him.
What I am watching next is whether Philadelphia's fit around LeBron looks settled by late October or still under construction, because the Cup format punishes teams that need until January to figure out who closes games. Group play does not hand out warmups.
